


A Mother's Love

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/F, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Pre-Canon, Some Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 21:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13303476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond struggle in trying to groom Pink Diamond for her future role, between the two of them it feels a lot like something elseBellow Diamond parenting fic





	A Mother's Love

Blue Diamond could feel her lips tugging down, brows descending into a ‘v’, mouth tight and small, nostrils flaring. She knew how she looked and she wished she could iron out the anger just then, to look like the collected one here. She tried to think of cool serenity.

Blazing white stars being born, cool solar winds, ice, smooth ice planets. It doesn’t help, she still has her cross-face on when she walks into the room.

“Yellow!” She tries to say it like a cool solar wind and fails. She taps her feet on the ground and puts her hands on her hips. “ _Yellow._ ”

Yellow Diamond was standing in her command room, her back facing her as she surveyed a new colony expansion. She takes her time turning around.

“What is it Blue?” She asks deftly as they survey each other.

Blue Diamond pursed her lips even further,  _like she doesn’t know._  “Pink Diamond has locked herself in her chambers.”  
  
She could make out the barest movement of an eye-roll. “Good. She can study galaxy schematics from there.”  
  
Blue Diamond’s lip curls up, “do you know why Pink has locked herself in her room?” She asks testily.

She can see Yellow Diamond’s head fall slightly as she sighs, she reaches over and turns the monitor off before turning around. “You really want to do this now?” She asks coolly, lowly.

Blue Diamond shakes her head, “We wouldn’t have to do this at all if you hadn’t snapped at her.”  
  
“I barely raised my voice.” She says hotly as she puts her hands behind her back and walks over. “She’s just…” Yellow hesitates.

Blue Diamond cocks an eyebrow up, they stare firmly at one another, “She’s just what?”  
  
“Inexperienced,” Yellow says with a controlled firmness to her voice. She eyes her and Blue Diamond straightens up.

“Oh? And that’s why you called her a ‘half-baked piss poor excuse for a ruby with no sense of direction?’” Blue Diamond tips her chin up as she says it, daring her to say otherwise.

Yellow Diamond stiffens ever so slightly, “she didn’t…” She sighs again, “she took us to the fourth quadrant instead of the twelfth during the last jump. The last five jumps in fact.”

Blue Diamond scowled, “she’s barely out of the ground Yellow!”

“Blue, even you were conquering planets by this time.” Yellow messaged the bridge of her nose.

Blue bares her teeth slightly, “She. Is. Not. Me.” She narrows her eyes, “or you.” Yellow doesn’t say anything in return and just walks next to a large display panel on the wall. Blue frowns slightly, “and what do you mean, ‘even me’?” She ads jiltedly at the end.

Yellow Diamond chuckles softly, “Fine, yes.” She finally concedes, walking up to Blue as her shoulders eased, “I’ll go talk to her.”

Blue stared down at her feet, “That’s not what I wanted. I already tried that.”  
  
Yellow stared at her hands, “Well I haven’t.”  
  
Blue hunched over a little at that, “and you think you’re better than me at this?” She seethed a little bit, letting the words fall out.

Yellow chuckled a little bit and tipped Blue’s face up so their faces were hovered closer together, “Oh stars no.” She was looking at her mouth and Blue’s skin prickled. “Neither of us was expecting this though, were we?”  
  
Blue can’t help but exhale slowly, “there was always meant to be four diamonds.” They just nod at each other, letting the unsaid words flow between them.

“I’m trying,” Blue’s eyes dart down to the floor and she feels strangely small at that moment. Like something she’d been reading her whole life was written in a new language. 

She feels a soft press to the front of her almost and she almost pulls back, she could feel her pearls eyes averting from them. They called it ‘proto-fusion,’ contact without the combination.

Blue draws back a little farther, Yellow cups her chin, “you are,” Yellow takes a deep breath, “trying more than anyway.” She says haltingly with a long pause, “it’s stunning really.”

Something twists in her center and she feels like she can’t catch the breath she doesn’t have.

Blue shakes her head but Yellow Diamond is tipping her back to kiss her again. She closes her eyes for just a moment, and then they hear a banging and a scream from somewhere deeper in the ship.

Yellow’s hand wonders down her arm and waist before she pulls back again, “I’ll go talk to her.” She said it in a resigned manner and Blue can only nod.

“Remember,” she strokes her face, “be gentle.”  
  
Yellow Diamond raised both eyebrows and turns to the door, “aren’t I always?”  
  
She laughs to herself a little bit as Yellow Diamond leaves and Pink shatters some zephyrite’s several halls down.

———–

Blue Diamond was perched on an observation deck, a newly terraformed planet lay beneath a panel of glass below their feet. A white planet with buzzing little transport pads and newly formed gems crawling out from the rich earth below. She beams at their awed faces.

“Oh oh,” Pink Diamond perched on her lap, tugging at her cloak. “Tell me about this one. How did we win?”  
  
Pink was practically bouncing, trying to get her attention. “Well,” Blue says simply, “it had 94% bacteria life and only .09 sentient lif-”  
  
“No no no,” Pink almost wailed as she bent close to her, “tell it like a story. A story!”

Blue Diamond hums gently and tries to hide a smile, “from the beginning?”

“From the exciting parts, geez,” She crosses her arms across her chest.

“Exciting?” Blue Diamond raised an eyebrow, “like when the Emeralds shot through their defenses,” she kisses the top of her head.

She laughs, “not like that!”

“And the Jaspers were released on the surface,” her hands run down her small sides.

“I hate it! No tickling,” she squirms and lets out peels of laughter.

“And the Lapis’s sank all the waters and the amber shifted the crust,” she peppered her cheeks with clumsy kisses. Pink pushed back at the pecks.

“Bluuuuuuee,” she whines with her feet kicking up, “gross.”

“Like that?” She asks innocently.  
  
“No,” Pink wiggled back and forth, “like, a story. Like you always tell them.”  
  
Blue Diamond looked up, feigning ignorance, “and what’s that?” She smiled softly.  
  
“Ugh,” Pink Diamond threw her hands in the air, “this is why Yellow says your ‘imposssibble’.”

Blue Diamond can’t help but give a throaty laugh. It was a spot on impression of Yellow’s voice that Pink straightened up and delivered. “Impossible and improbable.” She says again in the voice.

Blue laughs, “that’s very accurate.”  
  
Pink shrugs, “you’re the one she doesn’t like.”

Blue raised an eyebrow, “and why would you think that?”  
  
“Because of all the sounds from your r-”  
  
“Pink.” They were about to have a conversation Blue really didn’t want to have when they hear the woosh of the compartments door opening. Relief sweeps over her as she sees another figure walk through the door.

“I see you two are monitoring the progress.” Yellow Diamond says clippedly as she takes in the busy sight below.

“Yellow! Yellow!” Pink waves her hands in the air, “Blue was just about to tell a story.”

Yellow Diamond raised an eyebrow, “was she now.”  
  
Pink nodded vigorously, “come do the voices.”

“The voices?” Blue looked between the two of them.

“Yeah,” Pink settled down into her lap, “for the weak enemy fighters that fall to us like cowards.”  
  
Blue chuckles a little and covers her mouth, “I didn’t know you could do voices.”

Yellow sniffs loudly, “we should be going down to begin troop-”  
  
Blue rolls her eyes, “For stars sake Yellow, we just completed the new colony.”

“I was promised a story,” Pink says forcefully, her little eyes hot and angry.

She could feel Yellows eyes on her, “well,” she says slowly, “I suppose a story will help with Pink’s strategy preparation.”  
  
Blue Diamond moves over so Yellow can take a seat beside her, she feels her arm draped around her shoulder as she sat down, clasped around her. An assertion, a claim, she shivers slightly. They would have to deal with that.

Instead, she opens a diagnostics page to open up pictures of the flora and fauna of the defeated planet. Pink Diamond bounces in their laps as she sits with them.

“This place was huge!”

“Indeed,” Blue began, “it all started with a ruby fighter droid that located a small green dot on her monitor…” She started the story.

She didn’t know why her chest tightened like that or something swelled within her, she didn’t feel like this when she squashed her first resistance or sat for her first conquest portrait. She pushes it out of her mind as Yellow squeezes her shoulder and Pink’s eyes sparkle.

This was something else.

——–

“She’s not ready.” Blue Diamond balled her fists up and almost stomped her foot down on a crushed Blue Holly’s dust.

Yellow Diamond narrowed her eyes and turned away, “she’s made of the same material as you and me.” She says dismissively, “she was made ready.”

Blue almost snarled, “she’s too raw. For star’s sake, she’s barely bigger than a Jasper, Yellow.”  
  
Yellow turned back to the window, “and absolutely you know she probably won’t manage to get any bigger. She was in there too long.”  
  
Blue’s shoulders dropped a little bit, guilt gnawing at her insides. “That isn’t…that wasn’t our fault.”

“I know Blue,” she says roughly, “but she feels it when we treat her differently. It’s time you learn that.”  
  
Blue lifts herself up and takes a dangerous step forward, “learn what?”  
  
She feels a heavy hand land on her shoulder, “let go.”

Blue bats her hand away, “you don’t want her out there any more than I do.” She scowls as she leans forward, “you know she…” She cringes, “Feels things. Gets attached. She’s reckless. Inexperienced!”  
  
“We can’t hold on forever!” Yellow lost her controlled demeanor as she threw her hands in the air, “all she does is complain, yell, throw tantrums. This isn’t good for her.”  
  
Blue looked at the ground, “I,” her mouth opened and closed, “I know.”  
  
“She’s suffocating here.” Yellow’s hands were balled up too.

Blue grits her teeth, “I just don’t want to see her fail. It would shatter her Yellow, you know how sensitive she is. I don’t want to see her… hurt.”  
  
Yellow pursed her lips, she stood in front of her, tilting their heads together until their foreheads were almost touching, “I know how deeply you care about her,” she whispered, “I care about her too.”

“I care about,” Blue’s eyes dart up and meet Yellow’s, her mouth slightly open and something pulsing inside her almost painfully.

Yellow takes her hand and squeezes it, “nothing will change between us either.”  
  
All she can do is nod shallowly, “I’m just so worried about her.” She almost lets out a sob, “She’ll be all by herself.”  
  
She feels a kiss pressed to the side of her mouth, sharply, sweetly. “It’s time.” Is all she says back, “she needs to act like a diamond now.” Blue just sighs at that. Yellow pushes her hair back.

“Besides,” she says more warmly, “this planet is barely into multi-celled life. It’s the easiest one I could find.”

Blue hangs her head and looks back up slowly, “I trust you.” She looks out the window, “It is beautiful.”  
  
She sees a little blue dot on the monitor and feels Yellow paw at the back of her gown, she feels her kiss her neck. “She’ll be fine.”  
  
Blue’s lip wobbles slightly, “I’ll miss her.”

“Me too.”

They both nod and the pearls confirm that the launch party would be in several hours, Blue can’t help but send a little prayer out on her breath, to whatever force protected lifeforms with children.


End file.
